The Linux Foundation blogshttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog
en10 Job Interview Questions for Linux System Administratorshttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/10-job-interview-questions-linux-system-administrators
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/questions-flickr-cc.jpg" width="550" height="368" alt="questions flickr cc" title="Practicing common job interview questions can help SysAdmins brush up on skills before a job interview. Photo credit: Flicker, creative commons 2.0. " class="caption" style="margin: 10px;" /></p>
<p>Job opportunities abound for system administrators and DevOps professionals who know Linux. But even sought-after, seasoned SysAdmins still have to go through the hiring process, from sending in a resume, to taking technical exams and meeting for interviews.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And while resumes and tests are important, they often serve as an efficient way to screen candidates before advancing them to what is, arguably, the more critical test: a job interview. It's in the interview process that a candidate is vetted for the personal qualities that will help determine if they're a good cultural fit for the company and an employee worth investing in.</p>
<p dir="ltr">SysAdmins of all experience levels, then, can benefit from brushing up on their job interview skills if they want to find and land a great new job.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Interviewing for a job can be nerve-racking, especially when it's your first interview,” says Michele Casey, director of product management for Oracle Linux. “Just be well-prepared. That's the best thing you can do.”</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">Master the Interview Questions</h3>
<p dir="ltr">A quick Internet search for “SysAdmin interview questions” will give you more than enough potential questions to practice with. Sites like Quora, Stack Overflow and this<a href="https://github.com/chassing/linux-sysadmin-interview-questions"> GitHub SysAdmin interview questions repository</a> are good places to start.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But questions like, “Explain what happens when you type http:// into your browser,” have almost become cliché. Many skilled interviewers tend to skip over these common questions, and the basic technical underpinnings, in favor of deeper questions that not only show a candidate's level of knowledge, but reveal their personality. Such questions aim to suss out your approach to problem-solving, critical thinking skills, and how you react under pressure.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“I try to avoid asking the questions that are published out there, but not because I'm worried that someone will memorize everything. I want to make sure people are in situations where they need to think,” said Joe Smith, a senior site reliability engineer at Twitter. “Most of the time it's not going to be an easy solution.”</p>
<p>Here are some favorite interview questions from senior system administrators, IT managers, and human resources professionals who work at Linux Foundation member companies – some of the largest and most influential companies in the tech industry today. Each took a slightly different approach – some were much more technical than others. However, their reasons for asking were largely the same: find out who this candidate is, as a person, and how they think and reason through problems.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">10 Favorite SysAdmin Interview Questions</h3>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>1. What do you love about technology?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“I like for them to have an opportunity to share what they're passionate about, even if it has nothing to do with the job.” - Michele Casey, Director of Product Management, Oracle.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>2. Name and describe a different Linux/Unix command for each letter of the alphabet. But also, describe how a common flush toilet works.</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“The first question helps illustrate the breadth of their CLI chops. But just as important is describing how a toilet works; it demonstrates their well-roundedness and/or ability to think, reason, and hypothesize on their feet.” - Michael Jennings, Computer Systems Engineer, Linux Server/Cluster Admin, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>3. What open source projects are you interested in?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“A really good candidate, even if they're junior will have found the project they're interested in and be committing a bit back or writing some documentation. They will be really plugged into what the open source community is doing. They'll have run Apache Zookeeper, for example. They'll have wrestled with the code and looked through the docs and actually understand how this works. And maybe they haven't run it in production but they understand at a high level how the pieces interact, how you can take advantage of it, and what the benefits are.” - Joe Smith, Twitter.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>4. I have this server which seems to drop off the local net every so often, and comes back on its own. How would you debug this?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“I give them problems that I hope they don't already know to see how they work through them. I have a list of troubleshooting questions and guesstimate which one to use depending on the level of the candidate.” - Marc Merlin, Senior Linux Server Admin, Google.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>5. How does TLS work?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“It helps me understand how good they are with security topics. How in-depth they go with their answer – how comfortable they are – tells me a lot.” - Konstantin Ryabitsev, Director of Collaborative IT Services at The Linux Foundation.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>6. What do you know about SUSE, why do you want to work here, and what's the role of open source in the market?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“Candidates can show their motivation through concrete contributions or visibility in an open source community and an understanding of what companies do. They will have researched SUSE before they come and talk to us. The bare minimum is that they have installed openSUSE and actually played around with that.” - Marie Louise van Deutekom, SUSE's Global Human Resources Director.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>7. What about this job appeals to you?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“That'll tell me how much they've thought about it. A.) You need to make sure you understand your strong points – know yourself. B.) Know what the job entails. And C.) make sure that when you speak you do it sincerely and honestly and be yourself. Probably the biggest mistake that people make is trying to put on a facade.” - Steve Westmoreland, Chief Information Officer, The Linux Foundation.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>8. Tell me a "war story" about a situation that went wrong and what you did to help on your own initiative.</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“In an interview I don't dive into "tech" skills. Coding languages and various packages can be learned. I am firmly of the belief that you learn a heck of a lot more about a candidate in an interview by asking him or her to tell you "war stories.” If they stumble on that, then you're looking at a Drone. (Next!)” - Tim Hoogasian, Solutions Project Manager at Newstar Digital and former Technical Project Manager at Dell.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>9. Print the content of a file backwards.</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“I like broad questions where each person could give a different answer depending on their depth of knowledge. My personal answer is 8 characters not including the filename.” - Marc Merlin, Google.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>10. Nothing in particular.</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">“I don't have one question that everyone needs to know. If someone doesn't know the answer to something, that's great. We'll work through the problem and come to the answer together.” - Joe Smith, Twitter.</p>
<p> <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/sysadmin-job-interview-guide"><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/SysAdmin-Interview-WebAd_550x300_v2_ac-01.png" width="550" height="300" alt="SysAdmin Interview WebAd " style="margin: 10px;" /></a></p>Wed, 29 Jul 2015 21:14:09 +0000libbyclark11484 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgThe Companies That Support Linux: MariaDBhttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/companies-support-linux-mariadb
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/MariaDB_-_Roger_Levy_headshot_7.23.15.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="MariaDB VP Roger Levy" title="Roger Levy is VP of Products at MariaDB and a long-time Linux supporter, having previously served as GM of Novell's SUSE Linux business unit." class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" /><a href="https://mariadb.com/news-events">MariaDB Corporation</a> is a provider of open source database solutions for SaaS, cloud and on-premise applications that require high availability, scalability, and performance. Built by the founder and core engineering team behind MySQL, MariaDB has more than 2 million users globally and over 500 customers in more than 45 countries -- most of whom are running Linux.</p>
<p>MariaDB recently<a href="http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2015/07/linux-foundation-membership-grows-linux-dominates-it-infrastructure"> joined The Linux Foundation</a> as a new <a href="http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/corporate">corporate member</a> along with CloudLinux and Solace Systems. Here, Roger Levy, VP of Products at MariaDB and former GM of Novell's SUSE Linux business unit, tells us more about MariaDB; how and why they use Linux; why they joined The Linux Foundation; and how they are innovating with Linux and open source.</p>
<p><b>Linux.com: </b><b>What does MariaDB do?</b> </p>
<p>Roger Levy: MariaDB is the database platform that powers billions of users on sites including Google and Wikipedia. It’s an open-source, transactional, ACID-compliant RDBMS platform that allows organizations to build web-scale databases for applications in public, private, or hybrid SaaS deployments. Our customers’ database applications are agile and achieve continuous uptime with reliable connections that scale up to meet huge demand. </p>
<p>We provide an enterprise subscription offering, MariaDB Enterprise, which includes curated and hardened server binaries based on the leading open-source MariaDB community server, along with tools, connectors, subscription services and a customer portal that meet the needs of mission-critical applications. MariaDB Enterprise offers users the option to deploy MaxScale™, a database-aware proxy platform that provides capabilities such as load balancing, sharding, and firewall protection without the need to modify existing applications. The bottom line is MariaDB delivers high availability, scalability, and security beyond MySQL and other databases.</p>
<p>Our company, MariaDB, was founded by the creator and core engineering team behind MySQL, who collectively have more than 400 years of MySQL-related experience. Today MariaDB is the new “M” in LAMP, having displaced MySQL as the default database in the Red Hat and SUSE Linux distributions. MariaDB is also included in Pivotal Cloud Foundry, Rackspace, and other cloud stacks, and it is the database of choice for IBM POWER8 and IBM’s Turbo LAMP stack.</p>
<p><b>How and why do you use Linux?</b></p>
<p>Levy: Linux is the main development and production environment for MariaDB and for our customers because it is malleable yet offers a stable environment. We and our customers value the continued innovation in operating system functionality from Linux as well as its low total cost of ownership (TCO). We have more than two million users in more than 45 countries, and a majority of our 500+ customers are running Linux.</p>
<p><b>Why did you join the Linux Foundation?</b></p>
<p>Levy: MariaDB and the Linux Foundation are aligned in our commitment to an open-source model. Linux is the leading open-source operating system, and MariaDB is the leading open-source relational database. Linux is absolutely integral to our development program, so joining the Linux Foundation was a natural next step in ensuring that we would be part of the evolution of Linux and the future of open-source technologies.</p>
<p>We’re also looking forward to enabling our customers to benefit from access to the Linux Foundation’s online community with its continuous stream of innovation, broad developer ecosystem, and multitude of emerging Linux-based technologies. We’ve seen how valuable online communities can be from our own vibrant open-source community, which has contributed to MariaDB Enterprise with significant security and performance enhancements as well as collaborations with Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook. The Linux Foundation promises similar community-based benefits and provides phenomenal stewardship of Linux and its associated technologies. </p>
<p><b>What interesting or innovative trends in data centers and storage are you witnessing and what role does Linux play in them? </b></p>
<p>Levy: We’re seeing more migration to cloud architectures, growing interest in alternative consumption models such as Platform-as-a-Service and containerization, and a veritable tsunami of data and all data types which is driving greater storage virtualization and adoption of software-defined storage. Linux is the dominant OS behind many of these trends and is fundamental to the evolution of technology solutions and the DevOps efforts linked to them. We believe increasing adoption of these emergent technologies will drive even more widespread adoption of Linux. </p>
<p><b>How is your company participating in that innovation?</b> </p>
<p>Levy: MariaDB is enabling our customers to adopt these new virtualized and cloud-based technologies with innovations in security, scalability, replication, and performance.</p>
<p>Our customers with cloud databases or other cloud infrastructure demand top security, scalability, and replication capabilities. Together with Google we have built strong security features on MariaDB 10.1, and we’re building even more. ​For scalability, we’ve developed MaxScale™, a database-aware proxy platform with scalability features including read/write traffic splitting, load balancing, and schema-based sharding without the need to modify existing applications. MaxScale also delivers significant advances in replication, including innovative parallel replication and multi-source replication. ​ </p>
<p>To increase database performance, MariaDB has also created optimized server binaries. These binaries—the result of careful profiling and compiler optimization for typical use cases— can increase overall database performance by more than 15 percent.</p>
<p><b>What other future technologies or industries do you think Linux and open source will increasingly become important in and why?</b></p>
<p>Levy: Linux and open-source technologies will play a key role in building platforms for machine learning, virtualization, data analytics, and devices in the IoT, such as wearables and self-driving automobiles.</p>
<p>As software becomes increasingly pervasive in the world, technologies and industries will need a robust operating system as their foundation. Linux is the open-source operating system of choice, with a proven track record in Internet and cloud-based technologies. Linux is proven and mature, with a huge base of knowledgeable engineers who know how to make it work in diverse applications.</p>
<p>Maybe even more important, Linux is also tremendously malleable, with extensive feature functionality and a wealth of compatible components. We believe Linux is well-positioned to help define the future of technology, both for those technical reasons and also thanks to its large, expert, and vibrant open-source community, which drives ongoing innovation.</p>
<p><b>Anything else important or upcoming that you'd like to share?</b></p>
<p>Levy: We have a new CTO on board, Nishant Vyas, who is helping us further the capabilities of MariaDB to make it one of the most rapidly adopted open-source database platforms worldwide. His broad, web-scale engineering experience with multiple database-related technologies will help us continue to deliver innovation for our cloud-focused and enterprise-scale IT customers.</p>
<p>Plus, we recently announced the release of MariaDB Enterprise Summer 2015, which accelerates deployment of open-source DBMS applications and better integrates into our customers’ DevOps environments. </p>
<p><em>Interested in becoming a corporate member of the Linux Foundation? <a href="http://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/corporate">Join now!</a></em></p>Mon, 27 Jul 2015 14:00:00 +0000libbyclark11479 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgDocker VP Marianna Tessel: What’s Next For Containershttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/docker-vp-marianna-tessel-what-s-next-containers
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/Marianna-Tessel.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="Marianna Tessel" title="Marianna Tessel, Senior Vice President of Engineering at Docker, will give a keynote talk at LinuxCon, CloudOpen and ContainerCon North America in Seattle, Aug. 17-19, 2015." class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" />Linux container technology has evolved rapidly over the past year as adoption expands beyond large web companies to become the de facto way organizations are building distributed applications today. The technology has become more sophisticated to support multi-container, multi-host applications, and has even expanded beyond Linux to the Windows architecture, says Marianna Tessel, Senior Vice President of Engineering at <a href="https://www.docker.com/">Docker</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Docker, too, has evolved to meet its customers needs through both its commercial and open source projects.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Docker containers initially started out as a developer tool and have evolved to incorporate the features and capabilities users need to deploy container technology in production,” Tessel said.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Docker is also now participating in the <a href="https://www.opencontainers.org/">Open Container Project</a>, a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project to create open industry standards around container formats and runtimes.</p>
<p dir="ltr">What’s next for container technology? Tessel will present her view in a <a href="http://www.linux.com/#.Va2EjBNViko">keynote session at LinuxCon, CloudOpen and ContainerCon North America</a>, Aug. 17-19, 2015. Here she discusses container technology as it exists today, how it has changed, and the role that the Open Container Project will play in advancing container technology in the coming months and years.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Linux.com: What is the state of container technology today? Where is it succeeding and what are its challenges?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Marianna Tessel: In a short period of time, container technology has rapidly evolved to affect the way users and companies build, ship and run distributed applications. Containers have transformed the capabilities of developers and the companies that they work for – increasing productivity while reducing cost. </p>
<p dir="ltr">To give a couple of examples: Companies like ING are able to move faster through its development pipeline using Docker. In ING’s case, it went from a monolithic application with code changes into production measured in months, to 300 changes a day that go from code commit to production in 15 minutes. Other organizations are using container technology to streamline their legacy application architectures into a more agile microservices environment. Booz Allen is working with a large federal agency to create a secure DevOps framework for application development teams as they evolve legacy applications into distributed applications running in the cloud. These applications are used in managing the government-wide systems for those who award, administer, or receive federal financial assistance contracts and intergovernmental transactions. To create a unified developer experience and provide a uniform set of tooling and shared content, this large government agency is using container technology to break up these applications into microservices.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The biggest challenge with container technology is probably the rapid rate of adoption. Uptake is faster than anyone could have imagined so it has required Docker’s ecosystem to evolve rapidly. Users and organizations want a way to maintain a seamless experience through the development lifecycle. As applications become sophisticated and containers more widely adopted, the ecosystem is evolving as well – offering more tooling and options such as networking, storage, monitoring, etc.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Is security still an issue for containers? Why or why not?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Tessel: It is not about securing the container, it is about securing the application. Container technology actually provides another layer of protection for applications by isolating the application from the host and between the applications themselves without using the incremental resources of the underlying infrastructure and by reducing the attack surface area of the host itself. Docker, for example, does this by leveraging and providing a usable interface to numerous security features in the Linux kernel. The security attributes of containers are well recognized and even banking institutions such as Capital One are containerizing some of their critical applications.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Security will continue to be a topic of innovation. As applications are continually changing, the best methods for securing the application will need to evolve as well. Docker is continuing to hone its security capabilities and techniques to evolve from developer tooling to more sophisticated solutions that operations teams use in production. Docker Notary is designed to serve as a filter for the distribution of containers and Docker-related content in a project, including and especially in the production phase. This way, only digitally signed content that has been entered into Notary’s registration system, gets passed into production. Organizations using containers also need to ensure that they are developing in accordance with industry best practice recommendations. The<a href="https://github.com/docker/docker-bench-security"> Docker Bench for Security</a> tool is a helpful utility that automates validating a host’s configuration against the CIS Benchmark recommendations.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>How has container technology changed over the past year?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Tessel: Container technology has evolved in both breadth and depth over the last year, becoming the de facto standard for organizations to build, ship and run distributed applications. Docker containers initially started out as a developer tool and have evolved to incorporate the features and capabilities users need to deploy container technology in production. Containers have become more sophisticated and widely-deployed, expanding from a technology capable of managing single container applications to one that handles multi-container, multi-host distributed applications. As result, the type of organizations using container technology has expanded beyond the bleeding edge web companies. We continue to see new use cases and usages, such as, “Container as a Service” and Big Data Analysis applications. Finally, one of the most significant changes in container technology is the multi-architecture expansion of containers beyond Linux and Solaris to also include Windows.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>What role do you see the new<a href="https://www.opencontainers.org/"> Open Container Project </a>playing in advancing container technology?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Tessel: Users can fully commit to container technologies today without worrying that their current choice of any particular infrastructure, cloud provider, DevOps tool, etc. will lock them into any technology vendor for the long run. With one common standard, users can focus on choosing the best tools to build the best applications they can. Equally important, they will benefit by having the industry focus on innovating and competing at the levels that truly make a difference. Ultimately, the OCP will ensure that the original promise of containerization —portability, interoperability, and agility—aren’t lost as we move to a world of applications built from multiple containers run using a diverse set of tools across a diverse set of infrastructures.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>How will Docker contribute to the new collaborative project?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Tessel: Docker is donating both a draft specification for the base format and runtime and the code associated with a reference implementation of that specification, to the OCP. Docker has taken the entire contents of the libcontainer project (github/docker/libcontainer), including nsinit, and all modifications needed to make it run independently of Docker, and donated it to this effort. This codebase, called runC, can be found at github/opencontainers/runc. libcontainer will cease to operate as a separate project. Docker will also contribute maintainers to the effort alongside CoreOS, Red Hat, and Google, as well as two independent developers.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Marianna Tessel has over 20 years of experience in engineering and leadership, having worked for both large organizations and startups. She now runs the engineering organization at Docker, which actively contributes to the open source project and is also responsible for Docker’s commercial offerings. Before joining Docker, she was VP of engineering at VMware, having led a team of hundreds of engineers and was responsible for developing various VMware vSphere subsystems. She is known for catalyzing tremendous technology ecosystem growth and was included on the 2013 Business Insider Top 25 Most Powerful Women Engineers in Tech list.</em></p>
<p dir="ltr"><em><a href="http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-america/attend/register">Register now for LinuxCon North America,</a> to be held Aug. 17-19, 2015 at the Sheraton Seattle.</em></p>Wed, 22 Jul 2015 13:50:00 +0000libbyclark11474 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgBruce Schneier: IT Teams Need Cyberattack Response Planning More Than Preventionhttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/bruce-schneier-it-teams-need-cyberattack-response-planning-more
<p dir="ltr"><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/Bruce-Schneier.jpg" width="150" height="194" alt="Bruce Schneier" title="Security technologist Bruce Schneier will keynote at LinuxCon North America in Seattle, Aug. 17-19, 2015. " class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" />Corporate and government IT teams have been rushing to prevent the kind of large-scale cyberattack experienced recently by Sony Pictures, Blue Cross, Anthem, Target, Home Depot and the U.S. Department of the Interior, among others. In each of these cases, hackers from locations around the globe were able to gain access to computer networks housing sensitive information, accounts, and personal data, such as the social security and credit card numbers of consumers and employees. The consequences of such security breaches can be devastating.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“Everyone is hoping that they're not next,” said Bruce Schneier, a security guru and internationally renowned security technologist.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But prevention is only part of the solution, Schneier says. An organization’s response to a breach needs even more attention, he says. “We simply need to get better at incident response. We need to be smarter, faster, and more effective.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Schneier will give a keynote on “Attacks, Trends, and Responses” at<a href="http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-america"> LinuxCon, CloudOpen and ContainerCon North America</a> in Seattle, on Tuesday Aug.18, 2015. Here, he discusses the need for a conceptual shift on security and what organizations can do to better prepare for the - inevitable - cyberattack. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Schneier has authored 12 books as well as hundreds of articles and essays. He writes a popular and respected newsletter “Crypto-Gram” and his blog <a href="https://www.schneier.com/">“Schneier on Security”</a> boasts more than 250,000 readers. </p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Linux.com: What do you think is the biggest conceptual problem related to security in tech today?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Bruce Schneier: I think we need a major conceptual shift about how an organization relates to data. It used to be something separate, managed by the IT department. That doesn't work anymore. Data is central to every aspect of an organization, and often an organization's most important asset. This means that information security is basically corporate security. And while we've seen executive positions like CIO and CISO in response to this fact, I don't think it's really sunk in enough how much data is part of everything.</p>
<p dir="ltr">One of the things this means is that information security is not technical, although it has a technical component. It is much bigger than that. I am starting to see the conceptual shift in this direction. Conversations about resilience are part of it, because resilience is about a lot more than IT security. Resilience is an emergent property of a way to think about organizations and risk and security.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>What would you say are the biggest takeaways of the recent, large-scale attacks (like Sony)?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Schneier: The most important takeaway is that we are all vulnerable to this sort of attack. Whether it's nation-state hackers (Sony), hactivists (HB Gary Federal, Hacking Team), insiders (NSA, US State Department), or who-knows-who (Saudi Arabia), stealing and publishing an organization's internal documents can be a devastating attack. We need to think more about this tactic: less how to prevent it -- we're already doing that and it's not working -- and more how to deal with it. Because as more people wake up and realize how devastating an attack it is, the more we're going to see it.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>How is the industry addressing this now?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Schneier: Everyone is hoping that they're not next.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>What is the most important way organizations can improve their security practices?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Schneier: Security is a combination of prevention, detection, and response. Right now, response is the worst of the three and the area where organizations need the most improvement. We simply need to get better at incident response. We need to be smarter, faster, and more effective. We need to integrate IT incident response into corporate crisis management. We need to be able to figure out what's happening to our organizations and what to do about it. And we need to do it in a way that makes us more resilient as an organization. I know some of this sounds fluffy, but right now it's the most important thing we need to focus on.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>How can we address security issues at a global scale?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Schneier: If I knew that, I would be doing it. International issues are very difficult, and not only in cyberspace. Espionage is global. Cybercrime is global. Legal corporate surveillance is global. This is going to be a major issue in the coming years.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em><a href="http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-america/attend/register">Register now for LinuxCon North America,</a> to be held Aug. 17-19, 2015 at the Sheraton Seattle. </em></p>Tue, 14 Jul 2015 21:41:27 +0000libbyclark11462 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgLearn Linux Kernel Device Drivers With Linux Foundation Instructor Bill Kerrhttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/learn-linux-kernel-device-drivers-linux-foundation-instructor-bill
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/Bill-Kerr.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="Bill Kerr" title="Bill Kerr is a Linux Foundation Training instructor." class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" />Bill Kerr has taught Linux Foundation courses in Linux kernel internals, debugging, device drivers and application development for many years. He helped write the original <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/">Linux Foundation Training </a>course materials and has been working with UNIX kernels for 35 years.</p>
<p>“I participated in two ports of Berkeley UNIX to new CPU architectures (National Semiconductor 32000 and Motorola 88000),” Kerr said. “I first tried Linux in 1996 and was pleasantly surprised to find it had a "look and feel" very similar to the Berkeley UNIX with which I was familiar.”</p>
<p>Here he tells us more about the courses he teaches, how his career developed, and spending his semi-retirement in the great outdoors of the Pacific Northwest.</p>
<p><b>What courses do you teach at The Linux Foundation?</b></p>
<p>Bill Kerr: <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/development-training/developing-applications-for-linux">LFD312 Developing Applications for Linux</a>, <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/development-training/developing-linux-device-drivers">LFD331 Developing Linux Device Drivers,</a> and <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/development-training/linux-kernel-internals-and-debugging">LFD320 Linux Kernel Internals and Debugging</a>. I developed the original material for <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/development-training/embedded-linux-development">LFD411 Embedded Linux Development </a>and have taught it several times. (I'm not currently active in embedded Linux development, so others, who are, have taken this class over.)</p>
<p><b>How long have you been teaching?</b></p>
<p>Kerr: I taught the C programming language over a dozen times in the 80's and early 90's. In 2000 I met (Linux Foundation Training Director) Jerry Cooperstein when we were both at another company. He was developing and teaching the ancestors of LFD331 and LFD320, and I taught both those early courses until around 2003 or 2004. I think I was the first instructor under Jerry when he joined the Linux Foundation, teaching LFD331, LFD320 and developing LFD411.</p>
<p><b>How did you get started with Linux?</b></p>
<p>Kerr: I've been working in the kernels of UNIX since 1980, and have worked with several UNIX "clones" as well. I participated in two ports of Berkeley UNIX to new CPU architectures (National Semiconductor 32000 and Motorola 88000). I first tried Linux in 1996 and was pleasantly surprised to find it had a "look and feel" very similar to the Berkeley UNIX with which I was familiar.</p>
<p><b>How did you learn?</b></p>
<p>Kerr: MSCS from Washington State, and several decades doing new-product engineering development, usually in the role of principal engineer and system architect. So, formal education and lots of on-the-job experience.</p>
<p><b>What is your area of expertise now?</b></p>
<p>Kerr: Kernel internals, device drivers, quite a bit about using UNIX/Linux as a productive work environment.</p>
<p><b>What projects are you involved in currently? What are you working on?</b></p>
<p>Kerr: I'm mostly retired, and enjoying myself playing in the outdoors around Portland, Oregon. I bike, hike, and kayak, though I've left mountaineering for the past few years.</p>
<p><em>Learn more about Linux Foundation Training courses and certification at <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/"></a><a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/"></a><a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/">http://training.linuxfoundation.org/</a>.</em></p>
<div class="clearfix">
<div class="avatar">
<p dir="ltr">Meet more Linux Foundation instructors:</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/838067-learn-openstack-with-linux-foundation-instructor-tim-serewicz">Learn OpenStack with Linux Foundation Instructor Tim Serewicz</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/836639-learn-cloud-administration-with-linux-foundation-instructor-michael-clarkson">Learn Cloud Administration With Linux Foundation Instructor Michael Clarkson</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/835794-learn-kvm-and-linux-app-development-with-linux-foundation-instructor-mike-day">Learn KVM and Linux App Development with Linux Foundation Instructor Mike Day</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/835076-learn-linux-performance-and-scripting-with-linux-foundation-instructor-frank-edwards">Learn Linux Performance and Scripting with Linux Foundation Instructor Frank Edwards</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/833560-from-linux-user-to-electrical-engineer-to-linux-foundation-instructor-jan-simon-moeller">From Linux User, to Electrical Engineer, to Linux Foundation Instructor: Jan-Simon Möller</a></p>
</div>
</div>Thu, 09 Jul 2015 18:01:37 +0000libbyclark11457 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgThe People Who Support Linux: SysAdmin Rigs Raspberry Pi for Racing Pigeonshttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/people-who-support-linux-sysadmin-rigs-raspberry-pi-racing-pigeons
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/Pigeon-drop_copy.jpg" width="550" height="321" alt="Pigeon drop" title="Pigeons are dropped at one location for a race. They are ranked by the time it takes to fly back to their lofts. Photo courtesy of Robert Threet." class="caption" style="margin: 10px;" /></p>
<p>Pigeon racing season is over now but Robert Threet is still working on troubleshooting the wi-fi connection at the pigeon loft near his home in Indiana. Threet is a systems manager at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, but in his spare time he's engineering a Raspberry Pi to monitor his pigeons' whereabouts.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/pigeon-Loft.jpg" width="200" height="267" alt="Robert Threet's pigeon loft" title="Robert Threet is troubleshooting the wi-fi connection at the pigeon loft near his home in Indiana." class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" /></p>
<p>“I wanted to use it with a motion detector to take pictures of my returning racing pigeons and tweet them,” Threet said. The setup also includes a temperature probe to monitor the weather at the loft.</p>
<p>Pigeon races all begin in one designated place and finish at each person's loft, Threet explains. When a new member joins the pigeon racing club, they take the GPS coordinates of the loft and use them to calculate the exact distance of each race – anywhere from 300 miles for young birds, to 400 miles for yearlings, and 500 miles for old birds. Each bird's flight time is recorded by an electronic clock that scans an RF band on the bird. The bird with the fastest time in yards-per-minute wins the race.</p>
<p>Using hardware from Adafruit and their tutorials, Threet looked over the Python methods for accessing the temperature probe and the motion detector on the Raspberry Pi and wrote some simple Perl code to monitor the weather and the birds' activities. The trouble is the wifi connection, which doesn't quite reach the pigeon loft.</p>
<p>“I mainly use Perl to solve everything here. A lot of LDAP programming initially,” Threet said. “I am constantly parsing CSV files for varied reasons. Whenever I had to do interactive web programming, I used CGI.pm. Haha! So, lately, I'm working on Dancer & Mojolicious (still much better at CGI).”</p>
<p>Threet's Raspberry Pi monitor gives each of his returning birds a photo finish and – once the wi-fi is connected – will post it to Twitter.</p>
<p>“The setup is nothing to brag about,” he says, “but you asked for something weird.”</p>
<p>Threet recently joined The Linux Foundation as a new <a href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/individual">individual member </a>– something he has been meaning to do for years, he says. But he has been using Linux since 1993 when he first downloaded the SLS distribution from GEnie.</p>
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/third-place-bird.jpg" width="200" height="150" alt="third place bird" title="One of Robert Threet's racing pigeons. Photo credit: Robert Threet." class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: right;" /></p>
<p>“I got a very minimal Linux running (kernel 0.93p11) and then later bought a set of disks from Duke University (kernel 0.93p13still SLS),” he said. “My first really useful Linux was Kernel 1.2.8 Slackware 2.3. I couldn't get X Windows to run but this was MS DOS days so color Bash was pretty cool. I had an offline packet reader for mailing lists from bulletin boards. I also used minicom to dial up GEnie. Later I started using SLIP to get to to the Internet and dropped GEnie.”</p>
<p>Threet plans to make use of the training discounts that come with Linux Foundation membership. His new membership will also help keep him informed on the latest Linux innovations in virtualization and iSCSI SANs, he says.</p>
<p>Welcome to The Linux Foundation, Robert!</p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/about/join/individual">Join as a Linux Foundation Individual Member </a>before 5 p.m. PT on Aug. 8, 2015, and register for the Linux Foundation System Administrator (LFCS) or Certified Engineer (LFCE) certification exam for $49, an offer not available since the program was announced last August. This price represents a nearly 85 percent discount off the regular cost of LFCS and 35 percent discount off of the LFCE certification exam.</em></p>Wed, 08 Jul 2015 17:05:02 +0000libbyclark11455 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgLinux Training Scholarship Deadline this Fridayhttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/linux-training-scholarship-deadline-friday
<p> </p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;"><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/714/learn_linux.jpg" width="225" height="263" alt="learn linux" title="Learn Linux" style="margin: 5px; float: left;" id="Learn Linux" />Our <a href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2015/06/linux-foundation-calls-submissions-expanded-2015-linux-training">Linux training scholarships</a> have become highly competitive over the last few years with more than 1,000 people applying for just five scholarships annually. With the increasing use of Linux resulting in even more demand for Linux talent, this year we expanded our program to award 14 scholarship recipients. We also added two new categories to be inclusive of all age groups and skill levels: Teens-in-Training and Linux Newbies.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Since introducing Linux training courses more than five years ago and our Linux certification program last August, we’ve learned through our <a href="https://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linux-foundation/linux-jobs-report-2015">partners like Dice,</a> our advisors and members and Linux professionals the world over that IT pro’s equipped with Linux skills can bank on a lucrative career. Linux has become the entry point for anyone seeking a technology career because it dominates most of today’s IT infrastructure, from cloud computing to virtualization, web, embedded and much more.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">We hope our Linux training scholarships and Linux Foundation Certifications can increase access to learning opportunities and provide ways for professionals to showcase their knowledge and stand apart from their peers.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #000000;">Details on this year’s categories are below. With more spaces available this year for scholarships, don’t hesitate to apply. Get your application in by this Friday!</span> <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/free-linux-training/linux-training-scholarship-program">Apply here. </a></p>
<p><strong style="color: #000000; background-color: initial;">Linux Newbies (NEW):</strong><span style="color: #000000; background-color: initial;"> Open to applicants who have completed LFS101x - </span><a href="https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-linux-linuxfoundationx-lfs101x-2" style="background-color: initial;">Intro to Linux through edX</a><span style="color: #000000; background-color: initial;">: Individuals who are new to Linux but have learned the basics by completing the Intro to Linux online course are invited to apply. Recipients in this category will be awarded a scholarship specifically for the next course in this career-focused series - LFS201 - Essentials of System Administration.</span></p>
<ul>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>Teens-in-Training (NEW):</strong> Students under the age of 18 who have already started using Linux and want to get a head start on a career in the field.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>Whiz Kids:</strong> 2015 high school or college grads already familiar with Linux but who want to prepare for their career with extra training. Applicants must be 18 years or older.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>Women in Linux:</strong> We invite women who have demonstrated leadership or want to take initiative in creating opportunity for themselves or other women in Linux to submit applications in this category.</span></p>
</li>
<li dir="ltr">
<p dir="ltr"><span style="color: #000000;"><strong>SysAdmin Super Stars:</strong> These applicants should have already begun using Linux in their workplace but want to take their work to the next level with additional training.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong style="color: #000000; background-color: initial;">Developer Do-Gooder:</strong><span style="color: #000000; background-color: initial;"> We invite developers who are using Linux for good to submit applications, so they might expand that good work while enhancing their Linux skills.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong style="color: #000000; background-color: initial;">Linux Kernel Guru:</strong><span style="color: #000000; background-color: initial;"> This category will recognize an individual who has already contributed to the Linux kernel community and who has promise of becoming a Linux kernel developer or maintainer.</span></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p> </p>
<p dir="ltr"> </p>Wed, 08 Jul 2015 16:48:32 +0000jennifercloer11454 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgLearn OpenStack with Linux Foundation Instructor Tim Serewiczhttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/07/learn-openstack-linux-foundation-instructor-tim-serewicz
<p><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/Tim-Serewicz.jpg" width="200" height="200" alt="Tim Serewicz is a Linux Foundation Training instructor." title="Tim Serewicz is a Linux Foundation Training instructor." class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" />When Tim Serewicz started teaching Linux system administration classes at IBM, his boss thought Linux was “just a fad." Serewicz has since made a full-time career out of teaching admins the latest technologies in the ever-evolving and growing Linux ecosystem. He has taught at IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, and Red Hat and now teaches OpenStack and Linux performance and tuning courses for <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/">Linux Foundation Training</a>.</p>
<p>He aims to help his students “not only get the answers they want, but help them build the mental pathways to find the answer,” Serewicz said. “That is the skill they probably need most in the fast changing IT world.”</p>
<p>Here, Serewicz tells us more about how he learned Linux and system administration, his career path to becoming an instructor, his teaching philosophy and methods, and his hobby as a filmmaker.</p>
<p><b>Linux.com: What courses do you teach at the LF?</b></p>
<p>Tim Serewicz: I teach the admin line of classes, none of the developer classes.</p>
<p><b>How long have you been teaching? How long at the LF?</b></p>
<p>Serewicz: I've been a trainer full-time since March, 1999. I started training co-workers prior to that but it wasn't a main job function. I started teaching training courses for The Linux Foundation about 18 months ago.</p>
<p><b>How did you get started with Linux? </b></p>
<p>Serewicz: I was an IBM trainer. When IBM bought into a couple of Linux companies I was volun-told to pick up the new Linux classes. My boss at the time thought Linux was a bit of a fad and would never take the place of AIX. </p>
<p><b>How did you learn? </b></p>
<p>Serewicz: IBM used to control Red Hat's training department. I was part of a group of folks who were given the task of helping write and fine-tune the classes for delivery. There wasn't a lot of documentation at the time so much was by trial and error and great co-workers.</p>
<p><b>What is your area of expertise now?</b></p>
<p>Serewicz: In the Linux space I would say OpenStack and performance and tuning. I also still teach Solaris and SPARC for Sun/Oracle, MapR and Couchbase for NoSQL.</p>
<p><b>How did you develop that? What has your career path been?</b></p>
<p>Serewicz: When the dot-com era was starting I was running a three-room training center in Denver. My boss was rather inflexible with keeping up with pay to match the industry changes. So I moved over to Sun and started teaching their OS and SPARC hardware classes. I gained a lot of experience working with them and have provided support for their infrastructure, written some course content and usually teach the new material and handle difficult customer situations.</p>
<p>When Sun started to shrink during the dot-bombs I looked for other opportunities. I started working with various Bay Area start ups and tried to increase my knowledge base. IBM and Red Hat split ways so I started training for them more as well. I keep in contact with folks in the Bay Area still and work with emerging technology such as big data via MapR, Hadoop, and NoSQL via Couchbase.</p>
<p><b>What projects are you involved in currently? What are you working on?</b></p>
<p>Serewicz: I am updating the<a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/system-administration-training/essentials-of-openstack-administration"> OpenStack course </a>for The Linux Foundation. That is taking pretty much all my time. After that I have some updates to make to the Performance and Tuning class. After that Couchbase is rolling out an impressive update to their product and will spend some time working on that.</p>
<p><b>What are the hot-button issues or latest trends in your area?</b></p>
<p>Serewicz: Big data, OpenStack, SDN and NoSQL. Basically the customer is shrugging off the old vendor-lock paradigm for the less polished but lower-cost open technology.</p>
<p><b>What technologies and skills do you see coming down the pike that Linux professionals should be prepared for?</b></p>
<p>Serewicz: Knowing how to program, at least shell programming, will always be in some demand. Working with open source projects is a talent by itself. Find a project you care about and spend some time contributing. You will learn a lot and be that much more valuable in a typical IT department.</p>
<p><b>How do you address these in the courses you teach?</b></p>
<p>Serewicz: Depending on the level of student, I try to encourage and mentor my students. None of it is part of the formal class, but during breaks and off-hours I like to get to know my students. I'm a trainer because I love working with and helping folks. Anything my experience can help them with I'm happy to share.</p>
<p><b>Anything else you'd like us to know about you? </b></p>
<p>Serewicz: I favor an immersive Socratic method of teaching. It requires a lot more effort from the learner but they not only get the answers they want but I help them build the mental pathways to find the answer. That is the skill they probably need most in the fast changing IT world. Other than that I'm an amateur filmmaker. I love telling a good story, no matter the medium.</p>
<p>Learn more about Linux Foundation Training courses and certification at <a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/"></a><a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/">http://training.linuxfoundation.org/</a>.</p>
<div class="clearfix">
<div class="avatar">
<p dir="ltr">Meet more Linux Foundation instructors:</p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/836639-learn-cloud-administration-with-linux-foundation-instructor-michael-clarkson">Learn Cloud Administration With Linux Foundation Instructor Michael Clarkson</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/835794-learn-kvm-and-linux-app-development-with-linux-foundation-instructor-mike-day">Learn KVM and Linux App Development with Linux Foundation Instructor Mike Day</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/835076-learn-linux-performance-and-scripting-with-linux-foundation-instructor-frank-edwards">Learn Linux Performance and Scripting with Linux Foundation Instructor Frank Edwards</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.linux.com/news/featured-blogs/200-libby-clark/833560-from-linux-user-to-electrical-engineer-to-linux-foundation-instructor-jan-simon-moeller">From Linux User, to Electrical Engineer, to Linux Foundation Instructor: Jan-Simon Möller</a></p>
</div>
</div>Wed, 01 Jul 2015 23:26:04 +0000libbyclark11448 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgStackEngine's Boyd Hemphill: How Docker is Changing DevOpshttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/06/stackengines-boyd-hemphill-how-docker-changing-devops
<p dir="ltr"><img src="http://www.linux.com/images/stories/41373/Boyd-Hemphill-StackEngine.jpg" width="200" height="279" alt="Boyd-Hemphill-StackEngine" title="Boyd Hemphill is the Director of Evangelism at container application management startup StackEngine. " class="caption" style="margin: 10px; float: left;" />“Docker is Linux containers for mere mortals,” Boyd Hemphill is fond of saying. The Director of Evangelism at container application management startup<a href="http://stackengine.com/"> StackEngine</a> organizes <a href="http://www.meetup.com/docker-austin/">Docker Austin meetups</a>, DevOps Days Austin and <a href="http://containerdaysautin.com">Container Days</a> events. He has recently given a number of <a href="http://stackengine.com/docker-101-01-docker-development-environments/">Docker 101 </a>workshops around the country aimed at introducing DevOps professionals to the business advantages of embracing containers and the disposable development environments that they enable.</p>
<p dir="ltr">“What Docker did is they came up with a beautiful way to package and pipeline the use of containers for people with day jobs that aren't leveraging billions of dollars of infrastructure, i.e. mere mortals,” Hemphill said. “Docker allows us to think about those things in ways that are useful to us in our DevOps jobs.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill will speak about “<a href="http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/containercon/program/schedule">Minimum Viable Production with Docker Containers</a>” at <a href="http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/containercon">ContainerCon</a> in Seattle on Aug. 18. Here he tells us more about StackEngine, the use of Docker and Linux containers in DevOps, and how containers are changing DevOps practices.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Linux.com: What is StackEngine? Are you essentially building the Puppet or Chef equivalent for higher level container automation?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Boyd Hemphill: StackEngine provides a software solution to managing your Docker infrastructure. Today the phrase we in DevOps champion is, “Cattle, not Pets.” Tomorrow it will be, “Ants, not Cattle.” Yesterday you had 100 physical host pets. Today 1,000 virtualized or cloud server cattle and when one gets sick you cull it from the herd. Tomorrow you will have 10,000 or more Docker container ants. You won’t know where they are, you will lose track of them. With StackEngine you are able to describe the desired state of your infrastructure and allow the Container Application Center to deploy, manage and report upon its state.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At their core, Puppet and Chef are concerned with the state of a host’s configuration. They prep a host to receive a software application. Docker removes the need for much of this configuration. Indeed, companies such CoreOS and Rancher Labs remove package management from the OS altogether in favor of containers. So, new software needs to be written to manage the application containers and their supporting services rather than the idempotent state of the machines. The problem of application management is what StackEngine was formed to address.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Does StackEngine have an open source component?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: Our product is currently closed source. We just look at that as a wise business decision at this point. Right now we think the right choice is to keep our code to ourselves. If the market indicates a need to open source, then we will make that choice. It is, however, a choice you can only make once. There are parts of our code that we do intend to open source. For example, we will be open sourcing our API bindings as soon as we have them in a presentable state.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Tell me something I don't already know about Docker.</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: One of the biggest questions we're getting from big organizations is, “Do I really have to write all my stuff with microservices?” And the answer is no. We're seeing a lot of successful Docker usage by people who have just taken their big monolithic application, put it in a Docker container and activated it in different code paths. They use different environment variables and commands to run the containers and achieve some of the benefits that wouldn't have been available in a virtual machine. Tackling the problem of <a href="http://stackengine.com/legacy-applications-choosing-success/">which legacy applications to “Dockerize”</a> and <a href="http://stackengine.com/docker-101-03-1-containerizing-legacy-applications/">how to actually do it</a> is a prevalent question at this time.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Why use Docker then?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: There's a business advantage. In the virtualization wave of the cloud, only around 30 percent of a physical host’s capacity was used, leaving 70 percent still drawing power. The waste typically gets to millions of dollars for any company of size.</p>
<p dir="ltr">With Docker the claim is you can reach 90 percent process density. We're seeing 60-80 percent, realistically. Whether we achieve 90 or not, we're essentially doubling the amount of density we can get, thus using only half the infrastructure, thus half the power. For any company of size, that is a real cost worth keeping your eyes on.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>What are the benefits for developers and DevOps professionals?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: When you talk about developers, feature velocity is really key. Features mean money. So if moving the buy button from one side of the screen to the other drives more sales, then I win. If I can measure that through A/B testing, then I have proof I am winning, not hunches. If competitors aren't doing that, then I'm capturing market share. A/B testing existed long before Docker, however Docker makes it easier to reason about and perform technologically. A disposable development environment is the first step there – just being able to spin up a development environment by typing: “boot2docker up”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Right now, most developers are using what I jokingly refer to as hand-built, artisanal, bespoke development environments. When you pull on one thread, such as updating your Java libraries, the whole thing can come unraveled. This teaches developers to be terrified of actually trying to upgrade because, first of all, it's going to take them a day to do it, and then if it blows up in their face they have to back all of that out. Then they have to take another day to rebuild their development environment. It impedes the developers from taking the risk of getting that new language version in place that would potentially save them time. Think of the other sorts of risks your developers could take knowing they could get back to a workable state in moments. We are looking at another real boon to innovation.</p>
<p dir="ltr">With a <a href="http://stackengine.com/docker-101-01-docker-development-environments/">disposable development environment </a>you can change a single configuration line, like, “I want to use Java 8.” You say go, it comes up and everything is good – you can move forward. Or the tests fail and now you have a value proposition – it’s a business decision about time to fix the discovered issues versus the perceived rewards of the upgrade. The key difference is the developer only spent minutes discovering there were issues. The developer can take the risk of innovating and if they do that they're going to win more often and that organization is going to overtake its competition.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>How do you think containers are changing DevOps?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: I look at DevOps -- not as continuous delivery or Chef or Puppet or Docker -- but the way a technology organization embeds itself in a business, for the benefit of that business. Instead of trying to be prescriptive, I'm trying to enable thought in the context of the problem you're trying to solve.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Containers really enable DevOps thinking because it moves the microservices notion down to the infrastructure where it's much easier to think about. Previously it happened at the code level in a service-oriented architecture, which only the very best developers ever really understood and were able to do.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>How does Docker affect DevOps?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: It enables more of these models to be implemented in easier or more effective ways. Docker doesn't change DevOps, it enables more people to engage in DevOps thinking, and for that thinking to be more effective.</p>
<p dir="ltr">We tend to equate Docker and containers right now; that's wrong. But in this specific case, I mean Docker. Container technology has been around since 1998, arguably since 1982. What Docker did is they came up with a beautiful way to package and pipeline the use of containers for people with day jobs that aren't leveraging billions of dollars of infrastructure, i.e. mere mortals. Docker allows both Dev and Ops to think about a microservices architecture from their respective roles in a much easier way. It provides a common ground for this innovation. Thanks Docker!</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>So you're saying DevOps brings a traditional tech role in IT closer to business operations, which seems like a big evolution.</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: Dave Mangot, a DevOps speaker and systems thinker, happened to be in town in March and spoke at Austin DevOps Meet Up. In DevOps a lot of people talk about tightening feedback loops – that's a way of working so you have smaller batch sizes. When Dave drew his feedback loop it included the customer, and ultimately if you think about it, a system that doesn't include the customer is a broken system.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Do you know why they call it a production environment? Because it produces revenue. That's why it's so important... It makes money. How? There are a lot of ways. But ultimately our customers need to tell us by action – not by words – but by buying or registering for the software or service that we're providing.</p>
<p dir="ltr">DevOps should include everything from the genesis of the idea at some project manager, to the implementation of the idea in development, to testing and running the idea through operations and getting feedback through a customer support mechanism in the real world.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>How does combining containers with DevOps enable innovation?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: You have to ask yourself, “How do you know that a Docker container is doing what it's supposed to do?” This is a big question especially around security. Although how do you know that Ruby library you just pulled out of GitHub is doing what it's supposed to do? The notion of trust existed before Docker, so to say that Docker is insecure is misplaced.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But imagine instead of thinking, “What's inside that container – what's its operating system, what coding language is it using, etc.?” Instead, I'll see whatever Docker image comes out of the other end of the build pipeline as a black box, and I'll test that box as an Ops guy to make sure it complies with all the stuff that I need (requests per second, performs the following functions in the agreed upon way, etc.) By doing that we tighten the feedback loop.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Apply that same thinking to the practice of security. Today what we have is a lot of governance: “you may not use that package,” “you may only use these things.” That really kills innovation because developers can't get to the newest thing that other developers have created. Tomorrow we can have more compliance, “Your container failed these security tests, please fix it.” I hope you can see how that fits in the build pipeline central to a DevOps practice.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Can you give me an example?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: There's new stuff being added to the Linux kernel all the time such as cgroups, which started this whole thing. Developers really wanted to be able to take advantage of this but some were stuck using Ubuntu 10.04 because that's what policy dictates and the security people can't move fast enough to say 12.04 or 14.04 is indeed ok. Then you have this very rigid, slow-moving business unit (IT) that can't deliver change to customers at the rate at which those customers want to accept change. Keep in mind that the security people don’t want to be this bottleneck, they simply cannot keep up with the rapid changes in software and the exploits by hackers. It’s a tough spot.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So if we could build measures around containers to determine that they're safe and do the things they're supposed to do, in other words black-box thinking, we can accelerate feature velocity and innovation. Sharing disposable development environments allows people to just do a pull and go in a very easy way without a whole lot of human process. And if something really bad happens, it's just a matter of hours, not days, to roll back the changes (e.g. SQL injection hole) or roll forward to a solution (e.g. heartbleed).</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Does Docker change the game for DevOps?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Hemphill: We visited a company implementing Websphere for all these different customers. So they have literally hundreds of different permutations of Websphere and Java that they need to run and test each time they want to make a change. By getting Websphere stuffed into a container and taking advantage of the fact that a container starts in milliseconds, versus a virtual machine in a couple of minutes, they were able to reduce build times from 16 hours down to 3 hours. Which means that developers could push a few times per day and find out through the build grid, what was going on.</p>
<p dir="ltr">That was a real tightening of the feedback loop. And that was just in their first attempt, so who knows what they've ratcheted it down to now! They were also able to cut more than half of the physical machines out of the build process, saving a ton of capital and operational expenditure and a whole bunch of power.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Docker doesn't change the game to something different, it makes the game easier to play for more people.</p>Tue, 30 Jun 2015 16:57:45 +0000libbyclark11447 at http://www.linuxfoundation.orgAnnouncing Our First SysAdmin Linux Certification Workshop at LinuxConhttp://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/blogs/browse/2015/06/announcing-our-first-sysadmin-linux-certification-workshop-linuxcon
<p dir="ltr">Are you looking for a way to jumpstart your IT career or move mid-career to managing Linux systems? The 2015 Linux Jobs Report showed that certification is a great way to do this, with 44 percent of managers reporting they are more likely to hire someone with a certification. That’s one reason we created our Linux Foundation Certified SysAdmin program. If you have Linux skills, show it off with a convenient, neutral exam that has the backing of the Linux Foundation.</p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span><img style="float: left; margin: 10px;" src="/sites/main/files/u45801/logo_lftcert_sysadmin_0.png" alt="" width="200" height="174" />This year for the first time we’ll host an in person </span><a href="http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-america/extend-the-experience/exam-prep"><span>SysAdmin certification prep workshop</span></a><span> the day prior to LinuxCon in Seattle, Sunday, August 16, 2015. It’s only $69 which is a huge bargain on its own, but as an added bonus includes $100 towards your certification exam. And if you’re attending LinuxCon, CloudOpen and ContainerCon, the cost of the workshop is included in your registration. </span></p>
<p>Taught by Dr. Jerry Cooperstein, The Linux Foundation’s Training Program Director who developed the Essentials of System Administration course, this workshop will provide the opportunity to dig into topics relevant to taking the exam and to get your questions answered live. Jerry is an amazing Linux talent and teacher so this is a wonderful chance to learn from the best at a very small price.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Since the launch of the Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator exam last August, we have worked to make exam prep materials and courses as accessible as possible. This workshop builds on those initiatives, such as the release of our </span><a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/download-free-certification-prep-guide"><span>certification exam prep guide</span></a><span>, the </span><a href="http://training.linuxfoundation.org/linux-courses/system-administration-training/essentials-of-system-administration"><span>bundled Essentials of System Administration course and certification exam</span></a><span> offered at an affordable price point, and allowing those who do not pass the exam on their first attempt to retake it for free. But this is a chance to visit Seattle, meet many of us in person and learn a lot about Linux, containers and the newest cloud technologies.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>We believe this is a great opportunity to take the first step toward an outstanding career in Linux. </span><a href="http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/linuxcon-north-america/extend-the-experience/exam-prep"><span>Register</span></a><span> today, and we’ll see you in Seattle! </span></p>
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Tue, 23 Jun 2015 14:00:36 +0000amcpherson11441 at http://www.linuxfoundation.org